


qui vivra verra

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf), poppunkpadfoot (StormVandal)



Series: brinkverse [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 21:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18106760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormVandal/pseuds/poppunkpadfoot
Summary: James was such a terrible friend he didn’t evennoticewhen Sirius went down and startedbleeding to death. Yeah, sure, he was on the other side of the park, and there was a battle raging around him, and he didn’t have a sight line, and also it was dark, despite the almost-full moon. None of that felt like a valid excuse — he should have felt it, somehow. He should have known.Written for HPFT's Great Collab, theme: back from the brink.





	qui vivra verra

James was such a terrible friend he didn’t even _notice_ when Sirius went down and started _bleeding to death_. Yeah, sure, he was on the other side of the park, and there was a battle raging around him, and he didn’t have a sight line, and also it was dark, despite the almost-full moon. None of that felt like a valid excuse — he should have felt it, somehow. He should have known.

Instead, he heard it from Remus as they were making sure the park was clear — Remus, who was vibrating out of his skin with terror and anxiety and the need to be in London and not this bloody public park in Leeds, of all places. Alice took pity on them and told them that she, Frank and Moody could secure the area themselves, and that they should contact them if they had any news about Sirius. James could have hugged her. Instead, he nodded his thanks and scrambled to grab Peter from the other side of the park, where he and Frank were checking some bushes. “It’s Padfoot,” he told him tersely. “We need to go. Now.”

“What happened to Padf—” Peter said, cut off by James side-along Apparating them both to St Mungo’s. Remus was already there, speaking to the Welcome Witch, but as they arrived he said something neither of them could hear and turned away, frustration evident in his face. Clearly that was a no-go, so instead James looked for Lily, whom Alice said would be here somewhere. Remus said she wasn’t hurt, but James was panicking anyway, and then they turned a third corner into yet another waiting room and — 

Lily was _covered_ in blood. Her hands were almost completely red, her jumper sleeves stained halfway up to the elbows; there was a massive splash of crimson down her front. It was even smeared across her face a little. James took one look at her and thought to himself, half-hysterically, that there was no way Sirius wasn’t dead.

He had to stop walking and steady himself against a wall for a second. He thought he was going to throw up.

“Sectumsempra is nasty, but we managed to stabilize him, I think,” Alice had said, but surely there was no way, not when Lily had _that_ much of his blood _on her person_. For a moment, James thought maybe Lily, too, was dead — her head had fallen to the side, her eyes closed — until he remembered that sleep was also a thing that existed, and he could see the rise and fall of her chest from where he was leaning.

She hadn’t heard anything, she told them when he woke her, she didn’t even know what time it was; and there were no Healers around, nobody who could tell them whether his best friend was even still alive or whether he had any chance whatsoever. Remus, who had been panicking so much back at the park that James was sure it would’ve been visible from space, had gone eerily calm — he was quiet, a million miles away, as though he had just accepted — 

James couldn’t sit there for another minute. He’d spent too much time in St Mungo’s already for one lifetime — his parents had spent three weeks in here, dying slowly, and he couldn’t bear the thought that he was going to witness the exact same thing with his best friend, his _brother_.

His insides were made up of a thousand bees and he felt like he was barely holding all his bees together in some kind of coherent human shape, and he certainly couldn’t do it any longer while sitting in this uncomfortable bloody chair, so instead he offered to get tea. It was the one thing he could do — he couldn’t help save Sirius, but he could get everyone tea, and that was something, right? Right? It was useful? It would help. 

He made so many cups of shitty hospital tea for his parents. It got to the point where they asked him to stop, to just sit with them, just let them look at their beautiful darling boy, and — no. He could not think about this or he was definitely going to cry and it would be ugly and there would be snot everywhere and that was not what anyone needed right now. This wasn’t about his parents, this was about Sirius, and Lily was covered in blood and Remus and Peter and — 

As soon as he was out of sight of the others, he leant against the wall again and put the heels of his hands to his eyes, pushing down until he saw stars. He wasn’t going to cry, he _couldn’t_ , not right now. _Get it together, Prongs._ Tea. He was going to get tea, the others had _asked_ for tea. 

Perhaps, if he could just find a Healer, they’d give him an update. He could even find one on his way to the tea shop. Maybe one of them would remember him, and remember all the time Sirius had spent with him in the waiting rooms over those three weeks, and not ask for any proof when he told them Sirius was his brother. Adopted, he’d say, because it was so close to the truth that it didn’t count as a lie. Maybe his parents hadn’t filled out the legal paperwork, but unlike Sirius’s blood relatives, they had loved him.

(He’d asked Sirius, the summer he finally left Grimmauld Place, why he had come straight to Potter Manor even though they hadn’t spoken since May, even though James had given him a black eye for what he’d done to Remus — “Not that I’m not glad you’re here, Pads, but just… I’m surprised you didn’t go to Andromeda’s, or something” — and Sirius had shrugged, and half-smiled, and said, “You’re always there when I need you,” and James’s heart had been so full he thought it might explode right out of his chest and the thought of Sirius _dying_ while he was oblivious on the other side of a battlefield—)

The tea was forgotten as he spiralled into the horrifying, terrible future without Sirius or his parents. And if Sirius could die in this war, then who else would? Who would be next? Remus? Peter? Lily? The bees that made up his insides apparently decided that they were content to maintain a human form, but that they were also going to turn inwards and sting the shit out of him. All he could see was the future stretching out in front of him and the future was made up of funerals, all looking identical to his parents’ even though logically none of his other loved ones were Hindu; it was just the only point of reference he had. 

For just a moment, James wondered if he was having some kind of allergic reaction to the bee stings, but then he remembered the bees were metaphorical and his throat was feeling all tight and achy because he was crying. He’d resolved he wouldn’t cry — Remus needed him, and Lily needed him, and Peter needed him, and he was going to be strong and calm for them, because someone had to be — but it sure was all going to shit here in some random back corridor on the way to the tea shop.

He could hear himself sobbing more than he could feel it; he pulled his hands away from his eyes and pressed one over his mouth, feeling quite sure that the others must be able to hear him all the way from where they were sitting. He stood there for some unknown period of time — here in this clinical, artificially lit place, time had stopped — until finally he managed to pull himself away from the wall. While there were still tears on his face, he was no longer actually sobbing.

He did his best to look like he hadn’t been crying as he finally found the teashop, but that mostly consisted of rubbing his eyes so they became even redder, which was entirely counter-productive. He tried to muster up a smile for the tea lady, but she just tutted at him; while the tea was brewing, she slipped him a tiny square of spongecake covered in pink fondant. He tried to say he didn’t want it, but she insisted it was on the house and then stood there, glaring at him, until he put it in his mouth. 

He didn’t want to admit it, but it was delicious.

“Thank you,” he mumbled to her, because his parents taught him manners. He thanked her again when she handed him his teas, and finally made his way back to the others. He hoped they wouldn’t be annoyed that he’d been gone so long.

Thankfully, when he got there, Lily and Remus were engaged in some sort of conversation about Snivellus, and didn’t seem annoyed at him at all. He passed around the cups and settled down next to Lily, pulling her in against his side (as much for his own benefit as for hers); she was comfortingly warm, and someone had cleaned her hands. James took in the first deep breath he’d taken since they arrived and tried very hard to concentrate on the feeling of Lily’s head on his shoulder, and tried very hard not to think.


End file.
